Loremen Podcast - S4 Ep37: Loremen S4 Ep37 - The Vampyre with Sacha Coward

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Stoke your Brams and Bram your Stokers, because James and Alasdair are joined by Sacha Coward: escape room designer and author of the upcoming book Queer as Folklore. Taking us from Lilith to Lord Byron (stopping off at Tom Cruise for a layover), Sacha unearths the LGBTQ+ subtext of the Vampire. Sorry, Vampyre. Say it with a Y. We touch on some slightly more serious themes than our usual fare of decapitations and maggot-covered doors, but you'll have to check out the Patreon extras for the really slanderous stuff... Loreboys nether say die! Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen @loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I am Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shake Shaft. And James, what is this I have here? Why, it's a deputy law person. Yes. In actual fact, it's Sasha Coward, author of the upcoming Queer as Folklore, which is an LGBTQ history of various folkloric creatures and myths. And he's an actual folklorist, and he's really funny.

And he designs escape rooms. What? What's not to like? So, with some slightly more serious subject matter than our usual murders and beheadings, I present Sasha Coward and... The Vampire. You spelling that with a Y, sonny? I present Sasha Coward and the vampire. You're spelling that with a Y, sonny.

I'm spelling it with all the Ys. It's actually a yampia. You, you, you, you, you, you. Howdy there, James. Oh, uh, howdy. Have a nice day. Is that what howdy means? Have a nice day?

I don't know. I thought we were being Americans. Oh, I see. Because howdy could. Have a nice day. Is that what howdy means? Have a nice day? I don't know. I thought we were being Americans. Oh, I see. Because howdy could be have a nice day. It could be a contraction of that. Got to be like, how do you do? How do you do? Yeah, that's right.

That's clearly what it means. All right. Howdy. Well, James. Yes. We've got a little guest for you. Oh, yeah. Go on.

I'm immediately regretting the word little because actually I think sasha is probably one of the largest um guests we've had it's life size yeah he's a full-size human person uh sasha coward hello sasha hello hi sasha and let me know if i have this right you are a museum life-sized human a life-size average not larger than average i don't know i've seen photographs on the internet of your biceps and they are next to a param coin for scale they are i believe the word is swole is that correct well thank you thank you kindly i'm already dying inside this is a fantastic introduction to me as a academic and historian well-affected folklorist i did not mean to objectify you so early on in the podcast um it's just that the reason i say that is a lot of jocks listen to this podcast because they know that i abk am a jock um obviously james is more on the

nerd side and occasionally we want to throw the jocks something which is like uh you know a sort of muscular guy as a guest but you're but you are more than just a man with arms who is of normal size you are also a museum worker and folklore expert and escape room designer yeah i'm the most hipster person you've you've ever had to introduce i'm going to imagine and escape room designer yeah wearing an avocado monocle wait is the museum was that an escape room that went wrong well i do design escape rooms for museums it's very friggin niche but it does link together but it is it does come out as very disparate it all comes from the same place but it all sounds very eccentric when you say it

the listeners to the lawmen podcast will be like, niche, and they'll be tearing their headphones off and throwing their Walkmans away at the idea that we would cover a niche topic. But you properly know your stuff. Normally, we get comedians on who essentially take the mickey, mock the whole premise of the podcast in offensively guttural yorkshire accents well he's naming no names well his name's chris canterwell well he does oh yes his name is chris he does have a name yeah unfortunately but you have you've really done your research you've got a book called queer as folklore which is the hidden queer history of myths and monsters and that name is a really good pun but like the really good pun that is the title of our podcast it i wonder if it would work for americans because do americans know the phrase queer as folk or there's no just queer as folks

so we were worrying about whether it would translate if we're lucky enough to do well in america we're thinking maybe a title like monsters in the closet would do the same job but for an audience that didn't know queer as folk um as then again the tv series was turned into an american show called queer with the set and it wasn't like queer as folk like the office yeah they don't think they added an addendum to that. But yeah, it's bloody terrifying and exciting, writing a book. First book. And I have to admit, the title came first. I'm only writing a book because there's a cool title.

What better reason to write a book than because you've got a cool title? That's fantastic. Is it a Yorkshire phrase? Nowt as queer as folk, is how I'm imagining it. It's how I imagine hearing it in my head it's a it's an old it's an old english phrase that kind of would have been used everywhere but it's kind of stayed in in like parlance in like yorkshire and other parts of the uk which sounds a bit dated in other places but it's yeah it's got quite a history itself obviously not with the contemporary meaning of queer,

meaning lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, what have you. It's just being odd. People are weird. Yeah. They are weird. They are weird. So this really caught my eye because I don't think it's an angle we've looked at really in many episodes.

And I was surprised by some of the things I was hearing from you. There were sort of stories and angles on the supernatural and the mysterious and the folk that I didn't know anything about. So I was really glad that you decided to come on the podcast. Do you have a folk icon that you'd like to introduce to the pod? The thing is, we're not going to be talking about this icon my my personal favorite folklore creature is the mermaid i've got a bit of an obsession not that kind of obsession uh to some of the very strange direct messages that i've received that's like no no kink shaming here if you like mermaids that way fantastic uh awesome not not

me but i do love that as a figure. That's kind of what got me into mythology and folklore. But what I was hoping we could talk a bit about is vampires. Just because the queer story, I think, the history and queerness of vampires is so meaty. Like there's real, like there's some really good stuff there. There's a lot of spurned lovers there's there's a lot of just interesting places that that takes us so i thought that would be a cool one to dissect oh yeah weirdly i don't think we've we haven't had a lot of vampires on the show uh not knowingly but not also not done it as a story no no i can't

think we haven't covered many vampire legends they tend to be quite like well-known vampires on the well not to show off there's dracula mr yes mr that's just that's an example of a vampire i've heard of you are clearly a vampire like uh niche fantasist there dracula that's better than aficionado exactly i'm kind of into vampires you probably haven't heard of them um A bit of a vampire sommelier. Nosferatu. Does that ring any bells? F.W. Monarch's silent film.

Well, isn't Dracula, Old Draculz, he's famous enough that I've seen a picture on social media of a sign in Whitby Abbey saying, stop asking us where Dracula's grave is. He's a fictional character. But he's also, even in the book, not buried in Whitby Abbey, is he? That doesn't happen in the book.

That's the last place you look for a vampire is in the ground. Famously, not really buried at all. You're right, that is one of the main things about Dracula is that he's very much up and about. He's undead. The name. One of my favourite things about Dracula is that the characters in Dracula haven't read Dracula

and it's so famous now that it's hard to read it without going, it's Dracula! He's Dracula! Because it's incomprehensible that they live in a world where they don't. And we'll leave garlic around and a maid comes and goes, what's all this garlic doing here? I'll clear that out of the way. It's like, what are you doing?

There's a Dracula on the loose. That's ridiculous behaviour. Every vampire red flag. They don't know about Dracula. Now, vampires are a good analogue for a group of people that mainstream culture wants to have a go at, I think. They're very saucy saucy though aren't they they're sexy they're they're campers you know that they're monstrous they're monster like it's all of

the classic uh a level queer history essay about vampires like the basic thing is yeah there's kind of a baseline why vampires resonate with queer people why uh we see ourselves in the vampire we see ourselves in the monster a lot of the time but the thing with the vampire is there's there's certain tropes if you take your classic male and female vampires you've got your dracula right and dracula's got a little bit more hunky with time he wasn't necessarily originally in in the first book right he wasn't a sex symbol but he was quite refined and you know he was a wealthy single man living in a whacking great big castle uh you know flouncing around high disposable income yeah. The pink pound, as it might be said. But yeah, but that archetype of like the kind of the well-dressed, well-groomed, like ridiculously well-groomed gentleman with refined taste living by himself in the crumbling old ruin. idea if you think about like gay and bisexual men living around the same time not having families being a bit eccentric possibly with certain fashions and tastes that would make them stand

out a little bit you could imagine the weird old dude living in that big house is very much the vampire the villagers are going to be whispering aren't they yeah i mean they'll be whispering anyway but yeah exactly if you if you are flouncing around they? Yeah, I mean, they'll be whispering anyway. But yeah, exactly. If you are flouncing around with a cape, I would hope they'd be whispering. If I had a great big cape, I'd want them whispers. Well, that's why you get a cape, really, isn't it? Is this whisper material?

I think so. It's odd that Batman chose a cape to try and sort of blend in to the night, whereas a cape is one of the most flamboyant choices you can make, apart from a fedora. Sorry, you're not implying there could be a gay subtext to batman surely he wouldn't have time he's got to look after his ward have you seen thor like great big muscular shirtless dude walking around you know yeah super heterosexual definitely not uh partly created by queer people but that's the thing though the story that interests me is that there are these

characters like you said dracula super well known um and we think we know them and then you like look under the cape a bit and there's all this weirdness and there's these interesting stories of how we got to this vampire archetype who who has shifted like if you'd gone and spoken about vampires 400 years ago you wouldn't be talking about a well-dressed sexy dude in a fancy house or or glittery robert pattinson like these these are very much modern representations. But the journey from the ancient monstrous creature that was barely human, like more Nosferatu, to Count Dracula and then on to Twilight, it's a queer journey. It's a story that is told by and layered with queer lives, which I find fascinating. It occurs to me when you're talking about that, we also have, I suppose, writers like M.R. James. Mr. James.

Mr. James, who we don't know, but probably gay. And, you know, thinking of the older gentlemen who live alone and who have had a significant influence on uncanny and weird literature, I think there's more than just M.R. James. I suppose. i think there's there's more there's more than there's more than just mr james i suppose well there's bram stoker right i didn't know yeah many of his oh many of his biographers have had guessed or alluded to his sexuality bram stoker was very close friends with a number of queer writers at the time a number of gay men he uh wrote a letter that was very mysterious to a friend of his that basically said if you know what i'm talking about

then you'll understand my feelings but if you don't please burn this letter oh so there's all of this allusion to sexuality and i'm not going to say that he was gay i don't have the evidence of that but his own biographers have said he codified his sexuality in such a weird and hidden way and later turned on other gay writers he actually went on a bit of a witch hunt uh saying that there were far too many like sodomites amongst the writers and that they should be weeded out this is obviously after oscar wilde and all of this um maybe to protect his own identity by projecting so yeah i would very much say amongst these gothic writers who are definitely a bit bent uh i would i would include bram and so what is the sort of archetype of the vampire? Is Bram Stoker the original modern version of the vampire or not? Not at all.

Everyone's inspired by someone. And Bram Stoker was directly inspired by another story, which was called The Vampire, which is spelt with a Y, which means I always want to pronounce it really weird, like vampire. I think that's correct. Yes. I think our listeners will be very upset if we're not to vampire like extra spooky as well yeah you want to get a bit funny in the mouth with it right is that sheridan lefanu lefanu is that sure i've heard of vampires so so lefanu

didn't write uh vampire he wrote carmilla. Oh, no. I was wrong. I was wrong. Any whys in that? No whys, but they're lesbians. So that's also... Because I was trying to remember, I was thinking of Olala, which is Robert Louis Stevenson, I think.

And I thought that was lesbian vampires. But is this one lesbian vampires? There can't be two books with lesbian vampires in. Come on. Oh, my God. There are so many. So this is the thing that fascinates me, that the vampire that we have, like in a sense that the illusion I use is that they have folklorically speaking. God, that's a horrible phrase that makes me sound terribly pretentious.

But they have like a mother and a father and the father is queer and the mother is also queer, and the father is queer and the mother is also queer some unsurprisingly so that the father is probably uh the the character in vampire that was based on lord byron so we're talking about the bisexual menace the mad who was mad bad and dangerous to know who uh whilst he was hanging out with mary shelley who started writing uh frankenstein that same night that they had a competition to write a ghost story and uh he started writing a thing that he called a fragment that was about a mysterious man who might be a vampire he got bored of it and one of his little lovesick well i'd say cronies i thought that's a bit mean but one of his mates polidori takes this fragment and turns it into the vampire um and then after being very much reviled and

rejected by byron in fact he gets earns the nickname polly dolly from byron tries to smack in the back of the head with an oar once they're rowing they have a horrible relationship and um and so he turns the character that byron wrote into a parody of Byron. Byron, the sexy, wealthy, narcissistic dude, becomes this count, this vampire who is dangerous in many different ways. Dangerous to love as well as dangerous to be bitten by. And he tries to actually end up almost getting published and it gets misaccredited even though polidori actually finished it and wrote it it's made to be written as byron's again and byron doesn't want to have anything to do with it because it's a mocking piece of writing about him being an evil vampire and polidori's devastated because it's his work and it later

results in polidori basically taking his own life by drinking poison so you've got this crazy story started by byron and then that becomes the sexy gentleman vampire yeah wow does that establish any of the tropes of the vampire then of the drinking of the blood or the fear of the cross because i suppose they're not having a reflection it's quite a burn on byron yeah yeah i mean the the burn i think was the the novel thing or the new ish thing was that it was not a monster it was a man and that the man was wealthy and respected and that's that was clearly like byron that was the the this is talking about a man who loves himself a bit too much uh who everyone else adores but is evil inside. The blood sucking, I mean, that's ancient. We're talking going back to ancient Greece, the Empusa, Lamia,

like classical vampires that were barely human, often feminine in form. So we're like succubuses and incubuses as well, demons that would would take blood the vampire is more of a monster he doesn't really look very human and might be able to transform to look human but the the sexy or at least respectable vampire as a man more or less starts with this interaction with byron and polidori and the vampire there the vampire vampire. Byron spelt with a Y as well Oh my god, do you think? Minir Byron Byron

I can't remember if we covered Dr Polidori and any of the others when we talked about Shelley's Ghost. I think in The Year Without a Summer we did talk about the vampire being written. Yes so it's so i had heard some of that even though i got it wrong and thought it was sheridan lafano i've

throughout that i was i wanted to put my hand up and be like i've heard about this but like that's what i was like in school just like whenever something i knew about came up i was really annoying to be like me me i didn't mean sheridan lafano, I meant Dr Polidori I imagine that both the host and everyone you have in your podcast were that child at school That's the entire listenership, when we do live shows hands are up almost

You know when you've got your hand up and it's getting tired so you're using your other hand to prop up I have an answer More of a statement than the question This shift from nasty grizzled supernatural I have an answer. More of a statement than a question. This shift from a nasty, grizzled, supernatural monster to a hot, posh guy. We've all done it. We've all had a glow-up.

And what a glow-up. So this is happening in the Gothic revival in literature. This is happening in the 19th century. Yeah, so 19th century. You see some of it maybe starting a little bit earlier. So with the female vampire in the 19th century yeah so 19th century you see some of it maybe starting a little bit earlier so so with the female vampire in the 18th century we start to get um depictions like lefanny of of the sort of lesbian although obviously not described that way but the sexy countess often uh a wealthy mysterious vampire woman who preys on another young woman who basically seduces her,

who comes at night. But the object of desire, whether it's a male vampire or a female vampire, is nearly always the woman. So you end up with this queer succubus who who is also she's she's a bit of an older woman often but is still hot she's still beautiful in kind of a gothic and exoticized way so she becomes any weird woman just like the vampire man becomes any weird man so yeah like any any mannish woman who is uh physically aggressive or impressive uh any kind of woman that you know that folklore stories of doing weird things with blood of having rituals of uh seducing women like if we think of uh the way that witches are supposed to recruit uh it is often the hag takes a younger beautiful woman under her thrall and she is then embraced into

the world of witchcraft so it's the same sense of like an older woman who is predatory in some in some sense and and she like so her legacy is going back probably a lot earlier so we're talking going back to to biblical stories uh stories around the to. So not necessarily Judaism itself, but kind of the mysticism around the Torah. Right of there being a, that before Eve in the Garden of Eden, there was Lilith. And Lilith refused to lie for Adam. So she would not basically have sex with him she wouldn't be a wife and so she is cursed kicked out of Eden and turned into a monster and that monster is very specifically described Lilith or Lilitu as being vampiric she preys on men and she sucks their blood so the mother of vampires may in some stories have started in the garden

of eden as an alternative to eve um and then her children become vampires um so so yeah the mother there is is this it's just like the demonic seductress who in some images there's woodcuts from germany that show lilith three entering the garden of eden as the snake and seducing eve to eat the apple so sexually possibly taking eve and being this like you know predatory lesbian that makes eve make that great mistake so yeah it's it's a it's it's a whole thing i like that they brought the character back for that, but that's quite Bible-extended universe. It's always, it's a bit like Star Wars. It's always got to be someone related to someone.

What I like about those sorts of, the Rosicrucians and the people who are into the Kabbalah is that a lot of it feels like sort of Bible fanfic, where they're like, wouldn't it be, what if this person was actually that person? Like, if we were on the wiki of going in and editing Lilith's wiki, to add, and then

she came back as the snake. Yeah, totally. Like, Alistair Crowley was totally just, that was what he was doing. He was making his own fanfic, but turning it into a weird sex cult. It was all just like, oh, and then Horus and Osiris come down, but they have sex with demons

and I'm the prophet and they're all really sexy. And you're like, this is what a 14 year old would have written in 2006 as part of the Harry Potter slash fiction that I remember reading. It's the same thing.

I do always think that picture, the famous picture of Alistair Crowley where he's got the hands by his face really does look like he's having a bit of a sulk oh yeah i don't think he wanted to wear that pyramid hat his mom had forced him to wear his pyramid put on your nice pyramid hat there's a photographer coming alistair i'm not i'll i'll suppose but i'm not smiling i don't know where alistair crowley was from i'm writing about alistair crowley at the moment um because a chapter on demons and he's he's one of those people that like he's you know he shouldn't be your idol he's a totally messed up weirdo unpleasant dude but fascinating

and i do again i think his bisexuality comes into play there right when you know that you are growing up in what an edwardian just after the edwardian period and you you know you're like you're like guys and girls um it's a way to create the space uh to have the kind of sex and relationships you want like not every bisexual creates you know a massive demonic love sex cult i mean they should what a wonderful footnote not hashtag not every bisexual person uh does that just uh for legal reasons we have to be clear that not ever not everyone not not every single one no every single one that happened um but like the thing i i noticed though is that he he found all this esoteric weird mysticism

and stuff because he thought that was kind of a safe place uh partly to have the kind of sex that he wanted i mean this is a guy that put like a giant penis in his signature was he was he 13 when he did that this is what i'm saying this is why it's like that fanfic slash fiction like you know oh and these are my favorite this is my favorite demon like that fanfic slash fiction like you know oh and these are my favorite this is my favorite demon and that's my favorite egyptian god and they both have big willies and then they have lots of text i've got a copy of um the lesser keys of solomon which is like this uh text was basically the pokemon of demons um how to catch them all and alistair crowley has written his own introduction that's

completely unintelligible but very fun and in the margins he's drawn his own little demons and they all have massive willies like literally every single one even when the description does not say that they're pre-apic and have big willies no alistair's drawn like a great big horn guy and they're all kind of like winking or like sort of it's great i love it we had textbooks like that in school though it was not the lesser key of solomon but um it was avantage yeah and the german textbook where they foolishly made the main character a sausage you're asking for trouble there come on do you remember at school you'd have like a textbook and someone would write on one page turn to page 45 and then you turn and then turn page

20 and you'd be going backwards and forwards and then it would always be it would always be a willy at the end yeah it's um yes it's uh the alistair crowley escape room but in a book in book form yeah we do remember that um and i'm confident every single listener to the podcast was a fan of those weird sort of... My favourite of those was someone, some wag at our school did like a classic, like on page 23 it said turn to page 45. Page 45 it said turn to page 23.

What? Or they've got you, you're in an infinite loop. Oh, where's... There's probably some kid that's still there. Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. Ah still there. Flip, flip, flip, flip. Ah. Flip, flip, flip, flip. Ah.

It's not time. So vampires. So that is the story of the vampire. Thank you. So one of the things that I guess the common theme here is that in drawing a parallel between the perception of vampires and perceptions of queer people there's an obvious negative bent there so how how do you feel about that um i think it's there already anyway so uh if we look at the way the vampire has been portrayed so

during like the hayes code um which was the restrictive code for hollywood which basically meant you couldn't depict anything that was deemed immoral which include people like me well i mean we are deeply immoral but you know you should still depict us as their representation but but because of that the way that people would get around it was by showing uh queerness as the monster or the serial killer which is why we get the trope of dracula having such a you know a swish and flick and there is a flourish and because of that i feel that explaining why that is and taking some ownership and taking some strength in that is way better than just like pretending it's not there and i think that if you know and you know i'm sure you've got tons of LGBT friends and listeners,

we actually really love those labels. We've reclaimed them, or many of us have. You go to a pride parade, you are going to see fairies, unicorns, mermaids, vampires, devils, demogorgons, you name it. We sort of know how society has historically seen us. So what I'm trying to do in the book is kind of say hey you're not just borrowing these weird labels you haven't gone to like a halloween fancy dress shop and you're trying something on uh because you're a weirdo you actually helped craft these you're part of the story of why we have these amazing monsters like you're not just going oh

these are camp and fabulous let Let's use them for a bit. It's, it's a lot deeper. And to understand the story of the vampire, it tells you the story of people like us throughout history, how we were treated and seen. So I find it empowering. I would rather reclaim the monster than shove it back in the closet. That's right. What a good ending there that i feel like we want to cut straight to credits but unfortunately that's not how this podcast works but like we need a music sting there um i'm thinking trying to think of contemporary representations of vampires and i suppose twilight is the most famous and buffy the vampire slayer

which yeah which as it goes on gains a few gay characters, a few queer characters. I'm trying to remember. Yeah, you've got Willow. So Willow being your archetypical gay witch, lesbian witch. Yeah. But it does still feel like, is it fair to say that vampires are still kind of coded? There are no big gay vampire franchises that come to mind a hundred percent and there are you know i often as a historian um i like it when we talk

about no i like to talk about facts or i like to talk about this piece of folklore this person and be a bit more kind of rigorous rather than oh it feels kind of camp or it's a bit fabulous because that that can often just be seen as well that's just my opinion but there are loads of people that have looked at twilight and have said things like so um edward in twilight if it wasn't for the fact the one thing that makes him not gay is that he's apparently attracted to the main character through some bizarre like only this one character, only this woman, no other women ever,

just this one woman. But in every other sense, he sparkles in sunlight. Like he is in some ways sexless, like the gay best friend. He's very pretty. He, you know,

he's cold and distant and aloof so he's still coded and then if we look at like buffy the vampire slayer if someone um gets bitten and becomes a vampire you'll notice they just become a gayer version of themselves like when angel uh the kind of you know vampire boyfriend of of buffy um gets like becomes a proper vampire again he just gets more gay like that's the that's how you know he's a vampire he gets forehead wrinkles and big teeth and and suddenly it's just you know rhapsodizing about how he's going to destroy the world and watch it burn with a glass of blood in one hand like so yeah like it's it's written in there whether it's it's not intentional i don't think um these

people creating this are like oh we're going to lean into the queer archetype here it's just that what a vampire is that you know this is really tacky but the blood that flows through the veins of the contemporary vampire is queer it is so originating from stories of weird men and women of deviant lust of gender transgression of masculine women and feminine men of actual authors writers and creators who were themselves queer that the end product like whatever you do with it like you can try and make the straightest straight um vampire tanning you possibly can i'm still gonna see it as queer to be honest the only film and i've not seen this that i think is probably pretty heterosexual is that lesbian vampire film oh yeah is it jimmy the court the james corden

james buddy james corden um i can't believe none of us have seen this this Oh, yeah. Is it Jimmy Corden? The James Corden. James Buddy Corden, yes. The James Corden film. I can't believe none of us have seen this. Lesbian Vampire Killers. Yeah, Lesbian Vampire Killers is probably the greatest vampire film that's ever been made, which is wonderfully ironic, isn't it? So I think, unfortunately now, we're left with a situation where we have no choice but for for james and i to assist white men to now pass judgment upon everything you just told us

it's i don't know if there are any other podcasts where white men say their opinions so um we may have invented that idea so um are you ready to be scored yeah yes call me what is your first category uh so the first one's going to be about names okay i was very impressed about the fact that your book has potentially two names yeah that's quite cool that is good and that i mean there's some good good author names that i think we've overlooked in the past. Bram Stoker. Yes. That's quite actually great. Le Fanu.

Sheridan Le Fanu. Le Fanu. Le Fanu. Yeah. It sounds like an insult in primary school. Pretty good. Polly Dolly. Polly Dory.

That's quite fun. Even Polly Dory is a good name. Was his first name John? That's a really low-key first name. John Many Doors. It's Italian for lots of doors, yeah. And then you've got the vampire with a Y, right? The vampire, yes.

Vampire, vampire. Byron, the burger guy. Obviously, he makes his fancy hamburgers. In the UK, pretty exclusively. That's another joke we'll have to translate for Americans. Thanks, James.

Yeah. He's like, he's like a sort of, Byron is kind of a British Wendy's. It's like a pretentious Wendy's. What,

what is the difference between a Wendy's and a Denny's? Wendy's burgers are square. What? Yeah. No, they're not.

They've got corners, which gives you extra bit of crispiness, which is great to my mind. What, the meat patty itself is square? Yep. Nah. No, it is. Couldn't happen. I don't believe it.

I've seen it. Nah. You can test later. No, it didn't happen. No. It's a ham square-ger. Ham square- believe it. I've seen it. Nah. You can test later. No, it didn't happen, no. It's a ham square-ger. Ham square-ger?

Does that work? Yes. He's cut that out. It's made out of ham square-ger. No, I would love to cut it out, but I'm afraid ham square-ger is quite a good word. It's quite a good name, so that's actually going to add to the category, I think. I'm going to go with a three, I think. That's my suggestion. What do you think, James?

Am I being too harsh, too generous? Yeah, I feel like I've let this down. I should have just said exsanguination a lot, because that's a great word. That's a really good word. There's no way exsanguination happens enough that you need a word for it, I think. It's like a defenestration kind of vibe, isn't it?

Yeah, it is, isn't it? Because it occurred to me in English, we don't have a defenestration kind of yeah it is isn't it yeah because like in it occurred to me in english we don't have a word for the thirsty version of starving i guess that's because it's too wet here for us to need a word for it i'm i wonder if languages in hotter places have a word for that parched you know yeah no but but you don't you can't die of parched can you we don't have the word you can be thirsty you can be pag of parchation, can you? We don't have the word. You can be thirsty. You can be pagaring.

Dehydration. Dehydration. But that could be applied to, like, coffee or anything. You know, anything can be dehydrated. A packet of mixed nuts could be dehydrated. I feel like the more that we inspect this, what sounds like a really grand statement, the more it starts to fall apart. I didn't realise I was on trial here.

It's four out of five. I know I'm not's all forget that whatever it was i said that might have been wrong sasha what is the second category uh the second one is rating out a supernatural nurse what is the qualities that make this supernatural? Ever so. Well, vampires are pretty sky high, although several of the ones we've talked about have been works of fiction. So does that count? Yeah, but we did do like a long little preamble around Alistair Crowley.

Crowley, yeah. There's him with his hat. Grumpy Alistair Crowley. That's not natural, that hat. That's got to be supernatural. No, that's not a naturally occurring headpiece. And if you are claiming that the garden of eden and lilith is not a hundred percent accurate you will have some very interesting

twitter messages that's all i'm going to say we do occasionally upset the american conservatives who listen to the podcast for reasons that escape me they listen so that you can tell them what a denny's is. It's square. The burgers are square. This limey don't believe our burgers are square. When is square burgers? Denny's is moons over my hammy. Who?

Moons over... You're just saying noises. Moons over my hammy. Moons over my hammy. We could... I mean, you could have had that in the name. Moons over my hammy? Moons over my hammy.

It's a pun I don't understand. It's one of those American phrases I don't understand. Moons over my hammy. Moons over my hammy. It's a pun I don't understand. It's one of those American phrases I don't understand. Moons over my hammy is a breakfast option. The moon is everywhere. The moon doesn't just belong to Miami. No, my hammy. My hammy is. My hammy.

My hammy is because it's got ham in it. It's like a ham square burger. This podcast is so educational today. So, the category was supernatural. The category was breakfast items. We had Crowley. We had, yeah, we had Lilith. We had all of the, oh, the snake in the Garden of Eden.

The Garden of Vegan? The Garden of Vegan, yeah. Oh, my God. You are allowed to eat the apples. Go on, that's all we got. Have an apple. It's got to be five out of five, yeah. Oh my God. You are allowed to eat the apples. Go on, that's all we got. Have an apple. It's got to be five out of five for Supernatural. What other explanation could there be for vampires

or men who wear cloaks and are slightly fabulous, as you put it? What is your next category? A bit of a pun. We're going to do Coming Out of the Coffin. Ah, that's probably the first pun that's happened on this podcast. I'm sure it is. Well, that is probably the first pun that's happened on this podcast. I'm sure it is. Well, that is what vampires do, isn't it? Yes.

Yeah, but we're doing this in a, like, yeah, literal, but also queer figuratively as well. So you've got to factor that in. It's got two layers. Yeah. It does. Like a ham squirger. Like a ham squirger.

Oh, your artful reintegration of the ham square girl there. That's worth points, surely. I mean, you're definitely copyrighting it for yourself. This is... Did I convince you that vampires are just very queer? I think I am convinced, as the arbiters of all things. I feel completely confident about speaking out on this issue. Yes,

absolutely. I could see a vampire pointing out of that coffin in the, in the old sort of hammer films. There's nothing to be read into that at all. No. Yeah, absolutely. I just,

the thing is, I love the idea of them rising out and rather than everyone screaming, they're like, Oh my God, well done. Oh, congratulations congratulations i'm so happy ah like under those circumstances how could it be anything other than five out of five for coming out of the casket are we saying casket coffin crypt could be anything coming out all right so i've got the final category. Yes, the Le Fanu category. Le Fanu category. I'm not grading you, but I would have given you a five.

Thank you. Okay, so the final category, I'm going to call it hot-bloodedness. So we're talking about pure, raw sexuality. How sexy were these stories? I'm glad you came to,ames and i the expert on pure raw sexuality yes that's what it says in the bio of the website that's what that's what it says in the podcast information section in the description it's what it says in all the reviews all the reviews are like five out of five and then they say raw hot sexuality they rarely even add context they

don't say what they're referring to i don't think some of them have been listening to the podcast but i'm not yeah i was i was a little surprised when i actually came on the podcast after seeing all those reviews i was expecting something slightly different but yeah um sorry i feel like we got you on under completely false pretenses yeah okay i think I think vampires are quite sexy. Yeah, massively so. Every single one apart from the beginning of Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula where Gary Oldman looks like a scrotum. But the thing about Dracula is even when he...

Sometimes he's a wolf, sometimes he's a cloud of bees. Not hot bees, though. No, he's never a cloud of bees. That's not canon. I think i meant to say flies yeah no sometimes he's a swarm of lizards he can be anything like it doesn't just happen in the book he can be anything i just think like whatever you taste there's a vampire for you like you know if you're not fancying glittery edward cullen if you don't like capes if you're not looking for uh you know vampiric shira there's there's always something in one of the focals you're going to find your type everything from tom cruise to brad pitt

the full range of a tall attractive man to less tall attractive attractive man. The entire gamut. I think it's another five. I mean, hey, maybe this is... I was about to say white guilt. Is there a version of het guilt? Does that exist? Is that a thing? I think you just created it. I just created it.

Well, if anyone were going to do it, it was going to be me. I think it's five out of five. I would feel very weird about anything less than that. Even with old Gary Oldman looking like a testicle. Old Gary Oldman. Oh, maybe you're right. And actually, Sheridan Le Fanu's...

With that particular version. He can become cool, edgy Gary Oldman in the top hat and the blue sunglasses. Yeah. And the long hair. So what do you think, James? What's the score? Yeah, I think it is five. Even with the hair? Yeah, because... Even with the white hair?

I mean, that's... His hair's quite sexualised. It looks like a pair of testicles. Yep. This is the first episode I think we've done which has been mostly bleep i take pride in that for some reason um so queer is folklore it's a book um how can people get it how can people find out more about your work sasha thank you it's uh it's still being written uh that does not mean that you can't pre-order it in fact you i would ask if you're interested please do i've never been an author before so it's all kind of new to me

uh but from what i'm told uh pre-orders means that we actually get better a chance getting it into the bookshops and things so if you are if it is your kind of thing it's a book where every chapter is a different mythical creature and then it sort of expounds on that. So we do mermaids, witches, unicorns, vampires. But within folklore, I'm including aliens and robots and superheroes. So the ancient history of robots through a queer lens, if that sounds weird enough to tempt you to preorder it, then you can go and search

queer as folklore. It's on Unbound, which is my publisher, and you can get yourself a pre-order there. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I bet people will find that very interesting. Yeah, thank you very much. That was brilliant. Thank you. I had an absolute blast. Now you can hop along to Unbound, where you can support Sasha by pre-ordering Queer as Folklore, if you want. As a published novelist, I can confirm that pre-orders do help. So if that sounds like it's your cup of tea, please do check it out. What if someone wanted to listen to, like, an extra half an hour of our chat with Sasha?

What would they do? what would they do? how could they possibly do that? could they go to simply patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod yes of course that's how they could do it and you enjoy yeah it's quite a lot ruder oh yeah it's all the rude bits went into

it's a lawmen late it is lawman links it's about time we had someone who'd written a book on the podcast. It is. It absolutely is. Although we've, it turns out we had one all along. Yeah, it was me. Cause you wrote that book. I wrote it.

I did write a book. Yeah. All right. Another one. One day we'll have someone who's read a book on the podcast. One day. No, I've,

I've, I've obviously read the, uh, novelization of the Goonies. Or at least looked at the pictures in the middle.